Preston face questions over Rennie jibe

By COLIN WOOD

Last updated at 18:30 26 November 2006

Preston 0 Crystal Palace 0

Preston dropped two precious points on the day they needed victory to go above Cardiff to the top of the Championship and now they face FA action over a few ill-chosen words dropped by an announcer about referee Uriah Rennie.

The Sheffield official, one of the most experienced in the country, upset the home side and their followers with a number of decisions in the first half at Deepdale - most notably ignoring two penalty claims when Sean St. Ledger went down in the visiting area and producing a yellow card for Palace striker James Scowcroft when most of the crowd were screaming for red.

One voice was raised too high in one sentence at the end of a series of half-time announcements over the public address system. I could hardly believe my ears when I heard: "Enjoy the second-half of the Uriah Rennie show."

The authorities clearly take a dim view of such statements. An FA spokesman said: "We will be writing to the club asking for an explanation."

Preston manager Paul Simpson felt his side should have had one penalty and Scowcroft should have been sent off for striking St. Ledger. But Palace's Republic of Ireland midfielder Mark Kennedy defended Rennie and his team-mate.

"I asked the ref why he booked him and he told me that he persistently backed in and he'd done it again," Kennedy said. "I said to Uriah that Scowy had shown good experience backing in and the ref said he'd already warned him about it so he booked him.

"There was no sign of any elbow. I don't want to be critical of their players but they were obviously concerned about their own man. One or two went to the ref and tried to make it into something more. That's understandable, but there was nothing in it really and no sort of commotion between the players and it wasn't mentioned again."

Not mentioned again by Palace, maybe, but it was certainly the hot topic for those of a Preston persuasion. The encouraging thing for the men who are now level on points with Cardiff and Birmingham at the top of the table is that they accept they didn't reach earlier standards as an attacking force and gave Palace the credit they deserved.

Paul McKenna, the all-action midfielder who had a potential winner spectacularly saved by Iain Turner, the young goalkeeper on loan from Everton, in the last few seconds, said:'At home you want to win every game but against this Palace team we are not despondent about getting a point.

"They are a good side and I think before the season comes to an end they will be back up towards the top of the table. And when that happens people will look back and think this was actually a good point to pick up. They have had a bad run but I think they will go on a good run now and be a top team."

Kennedy, looking forward to a return to former club Wolves on Tuesday night, said: "It's another positive result and another step in the right direction for us. The manager here's got a fantastic group of payers, there's great character on and off the pitch and we've all stuck together during this difficult time.

"We really hit a bad run of form, but there were a lot of players out. Now he has the pick of everybody so let's see where that takes us. In the last two performances we've seen the standard of our performances go up now the challenge is to rise up the table and keep going."